Twin Souls Book Two: Preparations
by BigHead
Summary: Xander has the memories and abilities of one of the world’s most dangerous men. Now it’s time to put those to the test.


**Twin Souls**

**Author:** BigHead / Buffy belongs to Joss. Mack belongs to Don. I belong to taxes.

**Summary:** Xander has the memories and abilities of one of the world's most dangerous men. Now it's time to put those to the test.

**Rating: **R for language and graphic description of violence.

**Author's Notes: **A huge, enormous thank to Tenhawk and his input. This was supposed to be a mediocre fic in the back of my head, but now I think it might be worth reading. And to CanadianSatan, 3DMaster and Siege for the comments and beta.

**Feedback**: YESSSS! PLEEEEAAAASEEE!

* * *

Book Two – Preparations 

_Xander's Journal – First entry:_

_Mack Bolan. Frankie the Black Ace. Col. John Phoenix. Mike Belasko._

_I could add a ton of other aliases in here, but I guess that the one which interests me more at the moment is The Executioner._

_Bolan is the ultimate soldier, a man with a mission and a moral obligation that is unsurpassed. He is Justice, and Righteous Revenge. And the Mafia ticked him off in the past. His father asked for some money to the wrong people, and suffice to say, in a big round of bad decisions, ended up killing his entire family and committing suicide. Bolan blamed the Mafia, and that's when his true War began._

_He destroyed their operations. Killed a ton of their members. Got another nickname, the Bastard. And then, one day, his luck caught him. He was killed._

_Only not. _

_The government offered him another job, another identity, another target._

_Mack Bolan died that day, and Colonel John Phoenix was born. Head of the Stony Man Group, a counter-terrorist group so secret that only a handful of people knows about it. But even that didn't last long. He made even more powerful enemies, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security, the KGB. They entered their HQ, killed Bolan's love and almost destroyed the entire group. They did not succeed, but Colonel Phoenix also died that day._

_And Mack Bolan was reborn once again._

_I dressed like him for Halloween, and ended up with a lifetime of memories and abilities ingrained in my own mind, courtesy of a chaos mage and some wacky spell casting. How I did end up dressing like him?_

_You see, my father, before descending to the low life he lives nowadays, used to work for a company that ended up being muscled out of business by the Mafia. That was before Bolan entered the picture. He killed the family that destroyed my father's work, and in that, gained a lifelong fan._

_I could keep on going and writing about him, and I would probably fill this diary and ten others like it, but that's not my objective. I just need that, if someone ever read this, to understand why I did it._

_My name is Xander Harris. And I am a teenager._

_I was born in Sunnydale, California. Home to the Hellmouth. Yeah, the name ain't written wrong. Hellmouth. A gateway to hell. There is one, under our school's library. It acts as a demon magnet, attracting all sorts of demonic presences. Mainly vampires._

_Yeah, you read it right. Vampires, bloodsucking, sun-allergic bastards._

_They killed my best friend, my brother in all but blood, Jesse. And now I kill them._

_Well, not only me, the main part of this is a girl, Buffy Summers. The Vampire Slayer._

_I could write another diary just to talk about Buffy, but for now, let me just tell you about the Vampire Slayer._

"_In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer."_

_The alone part is bullshit. We, I mean me and a group of friends, we have been helping Buffy fight the Big Bads since day one. We help keep her alive, and we help in the fight. Research, some dusting (vampires turn to dust when you stake them), a few donut runs. It's all good._

_But now, I have something else. Memories and abilities._

_Bolan is a soldier, a master strategist and a counterterrorism expert. So am I._

_Or at least I have the potential to be. Unfortunately, being a teenager with no money and very little physical preparation is a complication._

_I have to remedy that._

_

* * *

_

The clock rang at the inhuman hour of five thirty in the morning. Xander woke up and checked his surroundings, one hand behind his pillow. Noticing that nothing was outside the norm, he stood up, stretched and walked to his closet. Two days ago, if he had done that, waking five minutes after the sun appeared in the horizon, he would probably kill himself with self-hatred.

Today, he frantically searched for his tennis and a sleeveless t-shirt. Finding one, he quickly dressed up, and after finding an old belt pack with enough room for a stake and a bottle of holy water, he walked out of the front door, and started walking at a fast pace to heat up the muscles.

* * *

_I know that I am out of shape. Sure, I can probably fight a newbie one on one for approximately thirty seconds without falling down on my butt, but that's not good enough. I have to get into shape, fast._

_So, I decided to run. It is doubly important, first it is a good way to get some muscles and stamina in this lax body of mine, second, I have to recon the town. Sure, I might know this town like the palm of my hand, but the soldier that the possession left behind doesn't. Angles, streets, places to hide, places to strike, I need to have a good idea on how to operate seriously in this town._

_Running it is, then._

_

* * *

_

Xander took the northern direction, at a fast clip. As he passed the streets, he kept on checking his surroundings, noticing things like houses, cars, empty places, alleyways, everything that his soldier persona demanded focus on. He would leave the cemeteries be for a while, until he could put some more resistance in his muscles and more awareness in his surroundings.

While he ran, he started formulating a map on his head on where he was now and where he wanted to be in a month, two, six and a year. He knew that he could be dead tomorrow, even with these memories, same way as Bolan.

* * *

_It is curious how Bolan saw himself and his own War. He never thought himself to be a super warrior, a Champion for Good, but just a guy who would do anything to make thinks right._

_He always knew that his War was ever-lasting. No matter how many gangsters, how many terrorists, how many enemy agents he stopped, someone would always take their places. But he would give the world in general a reprieve, a chance to take another breath. And that he did, even knowing that his next mission could easily be his last._

_It is curious, looking at it even before the possession, how he and I are similar. Like Twin Souls._

_I have no high hopes on ending the supernatural threat. But I can make a difference, I can also help the world take another breath._

_

* * *

_

Forty-five minutes later, a sweat-drenched Xander was returning to his home, lungs and legs on fire, but a small smile on his face. Before he started running, he had set an objective in mind, and he managed it. Good.

He took a quick shower, a healthy breakfast and was walking to school, after hiding the .45 under his pillow in a more secure location. He was almost sure that his mother wouldn't even get close to his room, but why take foolish chances?

The brunette teenager arrived in school fifteen minutes before his first class, with another idea on his mind. He walked to the Maintenance Room, and walked in. Xander found the tools he wanted quite easily, but he couldn't use them right now, so he simply left one of the windows unlocked and walked out of the room, going to his class.

He paid attention to all his classes, which surprised Willow to no end, and Buffy, to a degree. He chatted with them both during intervals, but not once he touched the subject of last night's possession. Matter of fact, everyone at school was treating the events as some weird collective hallucination.

Talk about Denial, which in Sunnydale wasn't even close to being a river in Egypt.

The only truly weird event came when Xander approached Ms. Calendar, asking for some time with the computers. The teacher looked at one of her worse students with a mix of suspicion and awe. But she nodded her consent, and he sat down in the last booth in the room, far away from her. He stayed there for a couple hours, taking notes in his notebook. Once he was satisfied, he stood up and left, waving his goodbye to her.

Curiosity blossomed in her mind, and she stood up and went to check on what he was looking. She sat on the machine, and what was her surprise, he had cleaned up the cache and history for his visits. Shaking her head in disbelief, she looked to the door he had departed, wondering.

* * *

Xander did some other uncommon activities during the day. He signed on to the swimming team, and sat down on the benches during the karate class training. After the class was finished, he approached the coach and asked if he recommended any good Martial Arts Academy in town. The coach pointed him to an address, and Xander thanked him.

By the end of his school day, he bumped on Cordelia in one of the halls, she surrounded by her flock of sheep.

"Can we talk?" he asked, in a sure tone.

Cordelia looked at her sheep. "I'll find you girls later."

The flock dispersed, and they were left practically alone in the halls. "What do you want, dweeb?"

"I just wanted to know if you are okay, after last night."

Cordelia was truly surprised. "What does it matter to you?" she snapped.

"I worry about my friends," he answered, unwavering.

Somehow, the tone of his voice and his answer deflated her snappy routine.

"I-I'm okay," she answered, somewhat subdued.

"Good to know," he said, and started walking away. Before he had given three steps, Cordelia called back.

"X-Xander. And you?"

He gave her a lopsided smile, and shook his head. "I'm okay. See ya," he said and walked away, leaving a thinking Cordelia standing at the hallway.

* * *

_The research over the net was great. It will help me in the long run, but till I have some serious money to spend, I will have to wing it. Time to make good use of Bolan's expertise._

_

* * *

_

As soon as the sun set in Sunnydale, the underworld spread its wings. Vampires, demons and other things barring description came out of their lumbering sleep, and the town changed. Shadows became traps, alleyways became restaurants, and in all that, hunters became hunted.

One of the hunters walked out of his room in silence, carrying a backpack. He was dressed all in black, in the same outfit of last night, sans his guns on display. His parents might be pricks, but an armed son would certainly evoke some sort of response. So he walked out of the house, making less noise than a vampire on the prowl. He walked to the garage, and from there he walked out with the double shotgun he had collected previously, and with the Colt resting in the holster near his hip, the tomahawk in a loop in his belt and a couple stakes. With a careful walk, he started going in the direction of Sunnydale High, checking the same surroundings he did by day now at night.

The creepy fear he always felt at night was now subdued, and it was substituted by wariness and caution. He walked from shadow to shadow, hiding from his enemies using the same methods as they did. He circumvented a couple of vampires, not wishing to attract attention to him yet, and finally, taking three times as long as he usually would have, he arrived at the school grounds. Instead of going in to the Library, he walked around, stopping under the unlocked window. He looked inside cautiously, and opened the window just enough to enter. He put the shotgun on the ground inside, and lifted himself up.

Once in, he locked the window behind him and grabbed the shotgun. He sat in one of the benches, and with practiced motions and the tools at his disposal, he disassembled the shotgun. He grabbed the barrel, measured it and made a small mark on it. Going to another bench, he locked the barrel in a firm position, and used a metal disk cutter to reduce the barrel almost to half its size. He wasn't worried about sound, mainly because the Maintenance Room was in the other side of the School, far away from Buffy's senses.

Once the cutting was complete, he removed the barrel from the clamps, and with a small file, he removed all the imperfections left from the cut. Then, he proceeded to clean up the other side of the barrel, it could be useful for something in the future. When he finished with the filling, he proceeded to clean up the interior of the barrel with a clean rag, and then he returned to the other bench and reassembled the shotgun, now much more manageable and easier to hide.

He cleaned up after himself, and left nothing behind that could point that he had been there. He escaped through the same window, and walked out into the night.

* * *

_I need several somethings to start my own type of war against the supernatural. A few are simple, and a few are complicated. But the main one is the most complicated of all._

_Money._

_

* * *

_

Xander walked around the nearest cemetery, one hand cradling the now smaller shotgun, the other a stake. He was searching for the perfect target, a lone vampire. In Sunnydale, he didn't have to search much. His target was a brunette, about five feet ten, wearing something out of the 70's and smoking a cigarette. He was walking almost in a straight line, going for two things, apparently: a victim, and staying away from the Slayer.

Xander tailed him from a safe distance, keeping himself in the shadows, while paying attention to his own surroundings. The vampire suddenly changed direction and walked out of the cemetery, going east. Tracking him became easier visually, but a tad more difficult, since Xander had to keep the shotgun out of sight most of the time. The vampire entered an alley, which ended in a lighted street, surprisingly, but he never appeared under the light on the other side. Xander approached the mouth of the alley, and he noticed a hidden door, almost invisible in the surrounding darkness.

Instead of going straight in, he circulated the building once, checking it around. It was an old store, but from the looks of it, it had been abandoned for quite a while. The vampire was probably living in the back.

A plan quickly formed in his mind, and he walked back to the alley. He approached the door, and he noticed that there was an eyehole in it, with light shining behind it. This would ease things up. In a vampire lair, nothing was human.

He banged on the door, and spoke loudly. "Excuse me, my car broke, could I use your phone?" Xander heard movement inside, and he leveled the shotgun right below the eyehole. The moment that the light was blocked, he pressed the trigger.

He didn't even wait for the sound to die out, he kicked the door in, and walked inside. There was a dust pile behind the door, and the wall behind was sprayed with dust particles and small holes.

He checked the house, finding it empty, but the typical vampire nest mess. Once he was satisfied that he wouldn't be ambushed, he started a thorough search of it. He ended up finding a wad of dollar bills inside the fridge, sharing space with a few bags of blood, some watches, and what surprised him even more, an old .38 Police Special, with bullets. Bloodsucker was afraid of being robbed?

Xander threw it all in his backpack, and walked out, deciding to come back next morning to check it more carefully.

His mission accomplished in full, he went back home, hid the backpack in his room, and the .45 under the pillow, and fell asleep.


End file.
